War Crimes - The Obama Administration's Embarrassing Lie

President Barak Obama campaigned on a promise of change.  When he was elected in November, 2008, many of us were justifiably elated, because the administration of George Bush, who will be known throughout history as one of our most stupid presidents, would be shortly leaving office and hopefully, replaced with more intelligent and persons more interested in civil liberties.  Unfortunately, the sad truth is that this has not happened.

Torture of prisoners is a violation of not only the Geneva Conventions but a violation of US law.  Yet, under the Bush Administration, the CIA and others routinely engaged in torture, including but not limited to waterboarding.  The famous "torture memos" that were authorized by senior lawyers of the Ashcroft and Gonzales Justice Department were later released in connection with various litigation.  These document revealed that as early as 2002, the Bush administration, seemingly ignoring both federal law and international agreements, began torturing prisoners to extract "high value" information.

Despite the fact that torture doesn't work.. a person tortured will tend to provide the torturer information that the torturer wants, not necessarily correct, easily verifiable information, torture is legally and morally wrong.  A president who stands for such morally correct opinions that abortion is murder and that homosexuality is wrong should know that torture of a prisoner is morally wrong as well.  Obviously, this was an administration which preferred that people do what they say, and not what they do.

Now, two years after the administration is over, we come to a point where we do not have anyone standing indicted for their involvement in torture.  Rather, the Obama administration has indicated that it is not interested in prosecuting Bush era officials for ordering acts of torture, nor for war crimes or other committed under the Bush administration.  Some of those possible  charges would include: Levying a war of aggression... (note that this was a charge on which multiple Nazi leaders were convicted and executed after World War II), torture of prisoners in violation of the Geneva Conventions, (the US Supreme Court made it clear that the prisoners in Guantanamo Bay could not be held indefinitely without charge), and last, but not least, the most serious war crime of all, (which really isn't a war crime, but a crime of stupidity), is that of starting a war with no plan to win it, and of repeatedly lying to the American people.

I don't believe for a minute that George W. Bush is truly evil.  I think he's too stupid to form the requisite evil intent.  However, he willingly let himself be led by truly evil, rapacious men such as George Chaney and Donald Rumsfeld into a war in which the US should have never found itself. In doing so, they bankrupted the US, ruined our economy, are directly responsible for over 4,000 US service personnel dying, and may have lost us the opportunity to truly deal effectively with Afghanistan.  For this and their other crimes listed above, I am  truly sorry that the Obama administration is unwilling to prosecute these evil men.